


5 Times Murphy's soul was ripped apart, and the one time it healed

by moonshinedelirious



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Angst, Pre-Series, So much angst, dyslexic!Murphy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 15:52:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3656121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonshinedelirious/pseuds/moonshinedelirious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically Murphy angst. Written because of my pre-season-finale nervousness. It's pretty much all in the title, really</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Times Murphy's soul was ripped apart, and the one time it healed

_He is 8_. The teacher calls him in front of his class and hands him the pen. Murphy swallows, trying to make sense of the letters swimming in front of his eyes. He blinks. They slowly slide into position, but they don’t form a sentence. It’s like there’s a filter in his mind that prevents him from seeing sense in them, prevents him from getting the message.

“Go on.” The teacher urges, nodding towards the board.

He steps forward, and through his panic he can hear the first snicker echoing through the classroom. As he stares up at the incomprehensible scribble with a racing heart his eyes begin to water, and the whole class seems to laugh at him. Their voices boom through his head, telling him what he already knows: He’s a failure and he will never amount to anything. The teacher sighs and takes the pen away, and he walks back to his seat, his eyes fixed on the floor as his classmates throw their pens at him and call him names. He wishes he could fly away, but even if he could, where would he go? The walls of the ark leave no room for freedom.

 

 _He is 15_. It all starts with a small itching at the edge of his throat, an uncomfortable feeling that he will never ever be able to forget. Soon enough he is unable to stand up, sweating with fever and coughing so hard that he feels as if his lungs are being ripped out of his body. His parents are looking down at him with worried eyes, but he cannot make out their faces in the blur of his vision. The filter in his brain has extended to his entire world; he cannot see anything clearly at all. He panics, but as his breathing quickens the coughing gets worse. He can hear his parents arguing, before he passes out, finally flying away like he always dreamed he would.

When he wakes up again after what feels like years his body is weak and drenched in sweat, but he can see again. He takes a deep breath of air and enjoys how it flows smoothly to his lungs and back. His mother is sitting next to his bed, a bottle of moonshine in her hands and tears straining her cheeks. She notices he’s awake when he sits up, and pushes him back down with a disapproving snort.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Your father died to make you better, so you better rest.”

He cries himself back to sleep that night, trying to find out what he did to deserve all this.

 

 _He is 16_. When he comes home from school he finds his mother asleep in a pool of her own vomit, but he doesn’t panic. By now he is used to it. Without much haste he walks over to her and shakes her awake, not as softly as he used to. She grunts and sits up, wiping the last traces of her breakfast off her mouth, avoiding his reproachful glare. Instead she grabs for the almost empty bottle of moonshine and downs it before she even acknowledges his presence.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She drawls, still not able to meet his eyes. “I’m your mother. You should respect me.”

Murphy snorts, forcing all traces of pity from his eyes as he looks down at the remains of his mother, a mere shadow of who she used to be. Her eyes flicker up at the noise, a fire burning in them that he has not seen for almost a year. He flinches back, unable to face the hatred that his own mother feels for him.

“You pity me.” She nonchalantly says. “You think I’m a monster. But you’re the one who killed his own father. You don’t get to judge me. Not you.”

He recoils, her words cutting through his soul like knives. He knows she’s lying, knows that she’s just trying to hurt him, but it works. A part of him believes her. A part of him thinks she’s right. She eyes him, distaste and repulsion hardening her features, before she purses her lips and spits at him. With disbelief he wipes the stinking fluid from his face before he makes a sharp turn and flees the place, unable to bear her presence any longer. He runs through the corridors for a while, not knowing where to go. There is no escape on the ark.

 

 _He is 16_. When he comes back, days after the incident, his mother is passed out again. Only this time, when he nudges her, she’s not waking up. He tries again, but he gets no reaction. Panic settles in his stomach as he forces her limb body up against the wall, but the paleness of her features tells him all he needs to know. He deflates, tears staining his cheeks as he sinks down on the floor next to her, clinging to her arm like he used to when he was a child. For a while he sobs and mourns, but when he runs out of tears a terrible coldness settles in his stomach.

He stands up and looks down at the remains of the woman that used to be his mother, and he purses his lips and spits. A slimy splodge of saliva hits her right in the eye, and for a moment he is terrified to find that he enjoys seeing her like this. Then he turns around and walks away, leaving her. He never comes back.

But the coldness never goes away. He roams the ark with ice in his guts and anger boiling in his heart, a rabid dog ready to bite anyone that crosses his path.

 

 _He is 17._ He sits in a bar and sips at a glass of moonshine, eyeing everyone around him with distaste in his eyes. He hopes it will annoy somebody enough to start a fight, and soon enough a large, buff guy confronts him, ripping him from his chair and throwing him at the ground. Murphy can taste blood on his tongue, but he shows his red-stained smile as he slowly picks himself up, the ice in his stomach slowly melting to make room for his boiling hot hatred. The room is quiet and everybody stares at him, he knows, but nobody notices the small shard of glass he’s hiding in his hand.

When they ask him later, about what happened, he will say that he doesn’t remember. He will say that the room faded behind a red curtain of anger and that he has no idea what he did. But that’s not the truth. He sees his opponent coming at him in slow motion, and he makes the conscious decision to raise his hand and bury the glass inside the man’s neck. But this was never about the man, or even a fight in a bar that escalated. The whole truth is, he made the conscious decision to rip the last piece of his heart to shreds, because, hell, what use was it to him anyway. All it ever did was bringing him pain, and he had enough of that.

A small part of him weeps, somewhere in the darkest corner of his mind, as he watches the man tremble and bleed out beneath him. He still stands above him when the guard arrives and they have to drag him away from the body. This time he does not enjoy what he did, but he needs to watch that person die, to see the consequences of what he did. He needs every last piece of his own heart to break and it does as he watches the man breath out his life while blood gushes out of the wound on his neck.

 

 _He is 18_. The ark sent him down to earth to die, but somehow he survived. He is more broken than he could ever have imagined, but he still breathes. His heart stutters and aches, but it’s beating and that’s all that matters. When he goes to sleep at night his past haunts him in his dreams, but when he wakes up he is safe and warm and he knows that nothing can break him. Because he tried so hard to rip himself apart and it never worked. His heart always mends back together, and at first he hates himself for that, but now he knows it’s just as much a blessing as it is a curse. If he himself cannot destroy his soul, neither can anybody else. And when he steps out of his tent, breathing in the fresh air of the early morning, he looks up at the pink sky and his heartbeat flutters in his chest. Maybe he cannot fly, but he is finally free.

**Author's Note:**

> It'd be nice to know what you think of it?


End file.
